Stuttering runs in families, and until 2025 almost none of its genetics had been mapped. A study of more than one million people found 57 loci — and a genetic overlap with autism, depression and the ability to keep a musical beat. 18 of its positions are in this catalogue.
Stuttering is a common speech condition in which sounds are prolonged, blocked or repeated. The developmental form begins in childhood. It is highly heritable and clusters in families, and yet for a long time almost nothing was known about which parts of the genome are involved.
Polikowsky et al. 2025, in Nature Genetics, ran eight separate genome-wide analyses of self-reported stuttering — divided by sex and by ancestry — and then combined them in meta-analyses of more than one million people: 99,776 who reported stuttering and 1,023,243 who did not. The study identified 57 loci and confirmed that the genetic risk it measured held up in two independent datasets. Dividing the analyses was the point: the authors reasoned that some variants would be shared across sex and ancestry and others would not.
The study found that the genetics of stuttering resembles the genetics of three other things, in both sexes: autism, depression, and impaired musical rhythm — difficulty keeping a beat. Follow-up analyses pointed to relationships between these traits that may be causal. That is a statement about shared inheritance in a population. It does not say that a person who stutters has, or will have, any of the three.
This catalogue holds 18 of the positions the study reports. 16 are filed on this site under stuttering, among them two in MITF — rs62252182 and rs17638538 — and positions in DCC (rs62097992), SRPK2 (rs3801279), MYO16 (rs72664949) and SLC9A9 (rs76347047).
Two were already here under another trait, and the study reports the same positions for stuttering: rs34394051 in CAMTA1, filed under educational attainment, and rs10850379 in MMAB, filed under worry. The study's link to low mood has its own pages on this site: depression.
Stuttering is diagnosed by a speech and language specialist who listens to a person speak — not from a genotype. None of the 18 variants on this page is used by any guideline to predict, screen for or diagnose stuttering.
The study measured stuttering by asking people whether they had ever stuttered, which is how a study reaches a million people and is also less exact than a clinical assessment. Its purpose was to find the biology. Speech therapy is the established help, for children and for adults, and many children who stutter stop without treatment. Nothing on this page changes whether to seek that help.
What a 23andMe/AncestryDNA export or raw VCF can and can't tell you about Stuttering comes down to these specific, well-studied positions — not a diagnosis.
The studies behind these variants recruited participants from different ancestries — a result found in one population doesn't always transfer to another. Based on 2 of 18 linked studies with a resolved discovery ancestry.
Databases, guidelines and references
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Stuttering. MyGeneLog™. https://www.mygenelog.com/conditions/stuttering
A common speech condition in which sounds are prolonged, blocked or repeated. The developmental form begins in childhood.
Largely. It is highly heritable and clusters in families. The largest study, in more than one million people, identified 57 associated loci.
The 2025 study found that the genetics of stuttering resembles the genetics of impaired musical rhythm, and of autism and depression, in both sexes. That is shared inheritance across a population, not a statement about any one person.
No. They are population-level findings. Stuttering is diagnosed by a speech and language specialist, and no guideline uses a genotype to predict it.
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